Parkitect

CA$ 63,730

2,619

127% FUNDED!!!

THANKS SO MUCH!

Parkitect is a simulation game where you get to build a successful theme park! Design roller coasters, install shops and thrill rides, and top it all off with incredible scenery and dynamic landscapes. Management is key: you'll have to look after employees, resources, and park infrastructure. Fail at that and face the consequences! Unhappy cashiers might annoy guests, unhappy custodians will leave your park a mess, and unhappy ride maintenance teams will leave your guests a mess.

We're approaching this inspired by other games of the genre and our love for simulation games and theme parks. We're setting out to create a modern experience with new features and ideas that previous games lacked. We're creating a fun, colourful environment reminiscent of amazing theme parks around the world. With that in mind, we're focusing our visual aesthetics on the cartoony and colorful, while maintaining (mostly!) realistic ride designs.

Resources

Shops require resources to be able to sell something. You'll have to ensure a timely and efficient delivery of resources to the shops in your park. At first this might mean hauling it by hand, though other means will become available.

Employee Management

Shopkeepers, cashiers and ride operators keep your park running. Just like guests, they have their own needs that have to be fulfilled. Unlike guests, they require special infrastructure buildings to keep them happy. Unhappy employees could cause negative repercussions throughout the park.

Maintaining the Illusion

Guests don't want to see the "behind the scenes" parts of your park. Build separate roads, paths and utility tunnels to keep resource transports and staff discretely hidden from your guests. Scenery doesn't just make the park prettier to look at, but ensures that your guests will never get a glance at the parts of the park they shouldn't see.

The game you've seen so far is a vertical slice, something we put together to figure out our workflow and get the basic systems working. We've been working super hard to get everything into this state over the past few months. What we have is a solid foundation to build on.

Variable track size and banking angle controls. (Placeholder UI)

Track G-force visualization mode

We've got the basics for roller coasters and coaster tracks working, though it will still need a lot of tweaking and polish, not to mention an actual GUI, to get it to where we want it.

We've put together a small selection of thrill rides so far to figure out how to make them work, now we're ready to move forward and add a lot more!

We've got park guests, paths for them to walk on and shops fulfilling their basic needs. Shops require resources to be transported to them by your staff. You can tweak how much of a resource goes into a sold product (for example how many ice cubes to put into a drink). This influences the desirability of the product, how much guests are willing to pay for it, and other stats.

Ride Node Editor!

We have also created custom editors for rides, ride stats, and balance stats. Additionally, the current UI in the game is all debug and placeholder, and we're planning on completely overhauling it with the new Unity GUI system.

And of course more rides, more advanced coaster building, further guest behaviours, additional staff, and more are all planned and waiting to be built into the game.

As for audio, we're working with the very awesome Gordon "A Shell in the Pit" McGladdery, who scored and mixed our trailer! He's worked on awesome projects such as the game Rogue Legacy and the YouTube series Smarter Every Day. We're very excited to be working with him and he can't wait to get cracking on the rest of the game. Check out some of his work at the link below:

We're a tiny team of developers. We've been working on this project for months now, bringing it from a programmer-art-laden prototype to the more colourful version you see here, but we're still far from being finished. To bring it to the level of quality that we feel is respectful of your investment will take time and resources. The funds from Kickstarter will help make it a truly excellent game. We may need to hire contractors to take care of smaller jobs like helping with promotional work, or additional scenery. However, the majority of funding will go to ensure the game has polish and balance, add music and sound, and cover the many other expenses involved in a project of this scope.

NONE. We want to make one, excellent game. Stretch goals run the risk of over-scoping the game and causing financial problems. We've decided against them after researching successful projects.

If we overshoot our goal, it will go towards making the game bigger and better. Some possibilities are mod support, online features (not multiplayer), map/coaster sharing (possibility of an in-game browser), and an expert mode for the coaster builder. How is that not a stretch goal in itself? We will do our best to try to add these features with whatever money we might raise, but extra funding will help us make these features easier and faster. That said, some might prove impossible or just plain not fun. We want to be as transparent as possible and we'll share with you our plans for the game if/when they change.

-Luke Plunkett, Kotaku - "...I just wish I could type Parkitect all day long it's such a great name."

- Indie Retro News - "Parkitect is looking to be a fantastic overhaul of the Theme Park experience, a new game that many of us have been wanting based on those great retro classics for a very long time."

-Julie Morley, Cliqist - "We’re painfully overdue for a theme park simulation game like this and it’s exciting to see it in the works."

YouTube

Sebastian Mayer is a programmer with a passion for games. Seriously, he loves them. And theme parks. He started this project in April on the TIGSource forums as an experiment just to see how he'd do coaster building. It turns out he would do really, really well. It exploded from there and he's brought the game to where it is now, with many systems already in place and many more planned.

Garret Randell is a 3D/2D art graduate and self-taught programmer who spends the majority of his time playing, thinking about and making video games. He recently decided to make the switch from generalist contracting work to making games independently and it seems to be working out so far! He lives in Vancouver, Canada and is constantly hanging out and collaborating with other experienced developers in the area.

Gordon McGladdery (A Shell in the Pit) is an experienced composer and sound designer with amazing passion who has contributed to 15+ shipped titles. You might have heard his work if you've played Rogue Legacy or watched the YouTube series Smarter Every Day. He's excited to dig into Parkitect! Gordon is also from the rainy wonderland of Vancouver, Canada.

Risks and challenges

This is an ambitious project. There will be business and preparation hurdles but more importantly the game itself is quite an undertaking. There are dozens of rides for us to build with varying amounts of animation, sound, and code work, not to mention loads of scenery and decorative items. We've built this vertical slice to reduce risk--it contains the core components of the game we want to make and solves the biggest technical challenges we were expecting. We've invested 4 full-time months into ensuring we can confidently deliver on this.

The completion date for Parkitect is an estimate based upon what we can and want to get done before we release a playable version. Some features may take longer than anticipated to implement. If we decide we need to push the date back, it will be for the good of the game. We will keep you informed and in the loop about any changes during development. Additionally, our current estimated release is for Steam Early Access.

Garret and Gordon live in Vancouver, which is arguably the world's most potent hub for independent game development. We have constant access to feedback from some of the independent game world's best developers. If there's an issue and we aren't sure how to fix it, there are plenty of extremely knowledgeable people for us to ask!

There's a difficult but fun road ahead of us. We're confident we can make this happen with your support. Thanks for backing us!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge CA$ 15 or more
About $14

A COPY OF THEME PARKITECT. A copy of the game on PC/Mac (possibly Linux too) plus a Steam key when we get there. The initial releases of the game will be early access versions, along the lines of a beta. It will be functional and playable, and will help us tweak and add features. All previous rewards included.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge CA$ 20 or more
About $18

A PROFESSIONALLY CURATED SOUND LIBRARY courtesy of A Shell in the Pit Audio ready for royalty-free use in your own projects! If funded, we will be doing professional recordings at theme parks and sharing the love with our $20 backers! The downloadable digital library will be professionally mastered, organized and correctly named with applicable metadata. We can't say how big it will be yet... but it'll be big enough to be worth your while. All previous rewards included.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge CA$ 30 or more
About $27

DEV DIARY! We'll put together a fun pdf detailing the development process of Theme Parkitect. It'll detail the art process, contain some concept art, how the coasters work, and other interesting stuff! All previous rewards included.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge CA$ 40 or more
About $36

PROTOTYPE (PC ONLY)! We'll send you an early pre-alpha version a couple weeks before Early Access to help us get the game into a good state for public consumption. This will be a very early build and likely quite buggy! All previous rewards included.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge CA$ 50 or more
About $46

YOUR NAME ON A GUEST! Theme parks get visited by loads of people every day, and we'll add your name to the game. You might see yourself as a guest exploring your park! It can be a partial name or a nickname, too. We reserve the right to refuse names if they are deemed inappropriate. All previous rewards included.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge CA$ 100 or more
About $91

EARLY PROTOTYPES (PC ONLY)! The game's been through a lot of iterations already, and we think it'd be cool to show some people the earlier, buggier, pre-pre-alpha versions so you can see how the game came to be. All previous rewards included.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge CA$ 150 or more
About $137

CUSTOM ACCESSORY! You get to help us make a custom accessory for your custom guest (within certain limitations)! We'll be in contact later to work with you on this, to avoid duplicates. All previous rewards included.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge CA$ 300 or more
About $273

NAME A RIDE! Help us put a fun, unique name on a thrill ride. You'll pick from a list of rides to name. Rides will have multiple names, randomly chosen when you build them. The name must be fitting for a theme park ride, and we reserve the right to refuse names. All previous rewards included.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge CA$ 500 or more
About $456

DESIGN A PREBUILT COASTER TRACK! Help us design a roller coaster track to put in the game as a pre-designed option. We'll provide a list of available types and a method to build it further along in development. All previous rewards included.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge CA$ 2,000 or more
About $1,822

CUSTOM RIDE! We'll work with you to create an all-new theme park thrill ride! We'll work together to figure out how it works and what it's called. We reserve the right to reject ride ideas should they prove inappropriate. All previous rewards included.